Foreign Secretary's Speech in front of Parliament
Following disheartening statements made by the new President of Geelakkar Island, Secretary Carter made his own statements in front of the Falleen Parliament. The speech, trascribed below, gave pointed language towards the new Geelakkar government's policies. "Ladies and gentlemen of parliament, I come to you with a heavy heart. If you ask anybody what the great foreign policy achievement of the pre-war administration was, they will tell you that it was the establishment of the Commission for the Drafting of Basic Civil and Military Rights for Members of the Nilira Alliance. My predecessor, Secretary Gabbard, came out strongly in favor of this commission when the question was raised at a meeting of Nilira Alliance representatives in 576. There were many members of the alliance, including our great ally of Verzarent, who were skeptical. And they were right to be skeptical; nobody wants the sovereignty of every nation in Nilira to be held hostage by an over-zealous international judiciary body. That is why Secretary Gabbard and every single delegation present agreed: the judiciary body, whose laws and powers would be established by the commission, would be as basic as humanly possible. Its job would be to guarantee the most fundamental and basic human and civil rights are being observed by the members of the Nilira Alliance" "So that brings me to the issue at hand. We now have an ally, Geelakkar Island, which says that it is very likely to refuse to observe the policies decided upon by the council. That is to say, I remind you, that they are not necessarily keen on the most basic human, civil, and political rights of their people. So now what? Geelakkar won't accept the findings of the commission, which is manned by representatives from every member state of Nilira, by the way. We need every member of the Nilira Alliance to consent to the judiciary and the laws it would protect. So what do we do? If it comes to it, do we abandon the judiciary on President Hedinnsson's behalf? If we subscribe to his theory that Nilira's only purpose is defense, then I suppose we might as well" "But we must be more. We must not accept that Nilira is just a geopolitical tool. I am here because I believe that Nilira is an alliance based not just on military convenience, but one that maintains that democracy and freedom are non-negotiable. We are fighting a war right now against authoritarians. They have an ideology, and that ideology is dictatorship, an economy where people have no choice, and most importantly, of spreading their form of government through violence and force - which they started this war specifically to achieve. They have their ideology; what do we offer as an alternative? I say we offer representative democracy, a guarantee that every adult man and woman can cast a vote for a party that represents their sincerely held beliefs without fear of retribution from the state. We need to ask ourselves as an alliance: will we offer the peoples of the world freedom as an alternative to tyranny, or will we stand for nothing? The members of Nilira already answered that question when they unanimously decided to form the commission. And if the new government of Geelakkar does not agree; if it supposes that it does not need to give its people free democracy; if it supposes that it can brazenly suppress the politics of the left; if it takes such issue with allowing its people such basic rights as the freedom of speech; then perhaps it should reconsider whether it belongs in an alliance that supports the individual's freedom of belief and right to vote their conscience." Category:The Imperial Constitution